tommorow when the war began
by laura-bro
Summary: Alyce was your typical of the run teenager, but what happens when her parents don't come home one night? this is the story of how one girl defeated all the odds and escaped capture, how she tested the limits of being alive, and didn't give a second thought of bullets whizzing past her head


Tomorrow when the war began

I'm feeling really lonely today so I decided to write this journal as a reminder of all the good and the bad things that I have done. I'm in the thick bush, leaning against a tree stump, making sure to keep watch. I'm only here because of that stupid, stupid war.

It started at the Wirawee show; I refused to go because it's so boring, and stayed home instead. It was already late when I finally decided to stop worrying about when mum and dad were going to get home and just go to bed, and see if they were back in the morning. When I got up and realised that they still weren't home, I started getting extremely worried and decided that once I'd had breakfast I'd go to the show, and see what they were up to.

I trudged along the footpath, scuffling my feet, my brain locked in worry mode. The spotlight scanning the show was my first sign that something was wrong. I crept more quietly along the streets, keeping to the shadows. I hid behind one of the parked cars, and peeked out; all the five hundred or so people from the small town of Wirawee were lined up in rows, lit up by the floodlights; there were around a dozen soldiers with guns pointed at them. The soldiers were shouting orders, and poking people with the butts of their guns, to get them moving. I heard a gun shot, and turned to where it had come from, a man toppled out of line, and I felt suddenly sick.

I knew I had to get out of there, I moved quickly through the rows of cars, and was at the back, when I turned around. I could see figures watching me through the fence, my first instinct was to hide, but as I looked closer at the people, I realised that it was a man and a lady, who looked exactly like my mum and dad. I ran towards them, forgetting all thoughts of caution. "Where were you guys!? Why didn't you come home last night?" I said hurriedly. "It's the soldiers, we were here having a good time, when we heard the helicopters, they landed on the ovals and blocked all the exits. Before long we were trapped like rats, I was so scared, it thought that they would raid our house, and find you" my mum answered, staring at her feet, tears dripping down her nose. I held mums hand and, was so glad that mum and dad were both ok. I heard a cough, and froze on the spot, hoping that it was only my dad. I turned my head slowly, and saw a soldier on the show side of the fence, gun in hand. A split second later I was running, running like I'd never run before. I could hear gun shots behind me, but I kept going. When I got to the first car, I turned around quickly, mum and dad were still standing there, right were I left them, screaming at the soldier to stop firing. "I'll get you out of there, I promise" I yelled, tears streaming down my face. My mum shouted back; "don't risk your life for us, keep yourself safe". I knew at the bottom of my heart that she meant it, but my brain thought differently, I was going to save them no matter what.

The gun shots were getting louder now; there must be soldiers after me. I turned on my heel and ran, waving over my shoulder, at my parents, who I knew would still be watching me. I ran through the quite streets, heart thumping loudly, tears still running down my face I could hear vehicles in the distance, and knew that the soldiers were after me. I kept running, keeping to people's backyards, and jumping the soldiers scannedeach house, and continued on to the next. They were gaining on me, and it took all my strength to keep going, I was not used to running, let alone walking long distances. I could see the bush in the distance, thank god, I thought with relief, safety. I was probably better off with the thicker cover, and plus I couldn't exactly keep running through people's yards and jumping fences all night.

**Chapter 2**

I was almost under the canopy of trees, when I heard it; a single gunshot, it missed my head by centimetres and I realised that they had found me. I bolted for the nearest line of trees, and once I was there, didn't even pause for a second of relief. Instead I thundered on through the bush, ignoring the pain in my legs, and the branches whipping my face.

As I ran I scanned through the trees, the soldiers were still pretty far behind, the person who had shot me must have had a long range riffle. I knew all about riffles, my dad was a hunter, and I remember one time I had gone shooting with him; he had given me a .22, and said shoot whatever you see. I shot a deer, a pretty big one too. We walked over to it, and there was blood everywhere. I took one look at the body, and threw up. I was only eight then, and even though I was now eighteen I knew I would never shoot anything again.

Something caught my eye, and as I turned I saw a big hollowed out log, framed by grass, it was perfect. I stumbled over, and crawled inside, feeling extremely claustrophobic. One of the soldiers shouted "Through here," and I struggled in further; making sure every part of me was covered. I could hear footsteps, they sounded pretty close.

"When we catch her, make sure you bring her straight to me," said a gruff voice.

I felt vomit rise in my throat and quickly swallowed it. The soldiers kept walking and I finally allowed myself to breathe, I crept out of the log slowly, and cautiously looked around, everything seemed peaceful, which was exactly how it shouldn't be when there were soldiers creeping around the bush.

I ignored the feeling of being watched and pushed on through the bush, in the opposite direction that the soldiers had gone.

I started thinking about the show, and wondered what the hell was going on with all the soldiers everywhere, come to think about it I did hear some planes flying pretty low last night, but I hadn't thought anything of it until now. I pondered this as I walked and finally decided that the planes must have held the soldiers, and that they definitely weren't nice people, and they weren't here for a holiday.

I came to a small creek, which twisted through the trees, dropping all thoughts of caution I ran straight to it. I was suddenly pulled to the ground in a bone breaking tackle, strong arms pinned me down, and I let out a scream, thinking that it was the soldiers coming to kill me. "What are you doing here?" said a gruff voice.

"I…I…I ummm who are you?" I stammered back.

"I'll answer that later, are you a soldier?" he replied.

"A soldier? Why the hell would I want to be a soldier?" I said, wishing that he would get off me. The guy, whoever he was released his grip a little

"Are you a soldier?" I questioned him, he shook his head and turned to look into the bushes "It's alright guys I don't think she's one of them" he said.

All of a sudden I was surrounded by six faces, all with identical scared looking expressions.

"Ummm h…hi, umm who are you? "I said doubtfully, still thinking that I was about to be killed by all these people. The guy who had pinned me down earlier started speaking to the rest of the group

"Guys this is… hang on what's your name?" he said directing the rest of his sentence to me.

"Ummm ummm I'm Alyce" I said still worried that they were going to kill me.

"Guys this is Alyce" he said finishing the rest of his speech. I gulped and looked around at all the faces, they looked pretty harmless, but then again those soldiers after me before looked like they could have been just on a Sunday stroll through the bush, so I didn't really know what to expect from these people: murder or friendship? "I'm Homer" the guy said, "This is Lee" Homer said pointing to an Asian, with black hair. "Kevin" he said pointing to a guy with dirty blonde hair, blue eyes and a crooked smile, I liked him immediately. "Fi" Fi was… Beautiful I looked at her in awe and shock, she had long blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, it was almost shocking seeing her in a place as bland as this. Speaking of which where was I?

"Corrie" Homer said, again pointing to someone in the crowd, Corrie was pretty with medium length caramel brown hair. "Robyn" a girl with short-cropped brown hair and green eyes, who looked extremely strict. "And finally, my favourite, Ellie" Ellie looked like a strong person, and not just physically she had long brown hair, and brown eyes, she also looked extremely easy to get along with.

**Chapter 3**

"Nice to meet you" I said cautiously. They all smiled back, and for the first time since the show I felt safe. Homer pulled me up off the ground, and I realised how different I looked from the group, they were all dressed in dark greens, blues and blacks, and here I was dressed in a light blue top, and light green pants. I felt like I stood out too much, and consciously crossed and uncrossed my arms over my chest.

"Well now that we know each other, tell us a bit about yourself, and don't leave out the part of how you ended up in the bush" said Homer with a wide grin. I grinned back, and started recounting my story, from how I hadn't wanted to go to the Wirawee show, and how I had waited and waited, and finally gone to check it all out, and seen my parents and how the soldiers had chased after me, and I had fled into the bush, and the part were Homer tackled me to the ground, and I thought I was going to die. Homer blushed a bit at the last part.

"Wait you saw your parents?" asked Kevin, suddenly looking happier "did you see any of our parents too?"

"I'm sorry I'm pretty new to the town, only been here a couple of years, and I don't go to the local high school, which I assume you guys all go to, so I don't really know any of you, or you families" I said with a sad look on my face, feeling bad for getting their hopes up.

"So what's your story?" I asked the group, hoping to break the tension. Robyn, who I took for the shy, quiet one, started recounting their story.

"Well we were a bit like you, I mean the Wirawee show does get a bit boring after about a decade, so we decided to go bush for the day, we hiked up to this beautiful spot called Hell that Ellie knew about, and we had the best time.

Towards the end of the day none of us really felt like going home, and we sent Kevin and Homer to go tell our parents that we were staying, and get more food and sleeping things, so we slept there for the night. We all woke up in the middle of the night when we heard the planes went over, and we just assumed they were practicing for something.

Anyway in the morning, we all started getting a bit suspicious, forming wild stories in our minds, until none of us could really sit still anymore. We decided that it would be a good idea to go back and prove to ourselves that there really was nothing to worry about. We took the long way to the show, stopping by Ellie's house to say hello to her parents. Turns out her parents weren't even home, neither were Homer's parents, none of our parents were home. We decided to go to the show, just assuming that everyone was still there. Once we got there we weren't exactly greeted with a pleasant site. So we crept around for a bit, checking it all out, and what we did manage to see was horrible. There were soldiers lining the joint, it was terrifying.

We had a quick meeting and decided that we should just go back to hell. I mean we didn't know anything about these people, or what they were here for, and by the looks of them they didn't exactly seem friendly. So we hiked back to hell, and stayed there for the rest of the day, and then we finally got the guts to come and have a look around, and we were just on our way back to the show when we came across you, and here we are."

All I could do was nod in response; I was so shocked by the story. Imagine coming home from the bush, and finding your family missing.

"So what do we do now?" asked Ellie, "are we gunna go to the show, or what?"

"Well we could, but by what Alyce has told us I'd say it's a bit risky" replied Homer.

I shrugged "if you guys wanna go that badly, why not take the risk, I mean if I hadn't seen my parents in two days I would be seriously worried". Most of the group nodded, in agreement but Corrie and Ellie gave each other worried looks.

"Yeah let's do it!" Homer shouted in excitement, Robyn rolled her eyes at him, and everyone else picked their things off the ground, and started making their ways back the way I had come. I followed them, regretting my words already, I would be traumatised for the rest of my life, just thinking of them gun shots.

Everyone kept to the shadows, and I was glad because it gave me time to think, without anyone being able to see my facial expressions. I started wondering how I was going to get my parents out, and even if I did manage to get them out where would we hide?

Soon we came to the spot where I had hidden from the soldiers, and I shuddered when I saw the log that I had hidden in, it looked even smaller from the outside.

I really didn't want to get out of the protection of the thick trees, but I was the one who had suggested that we should go back to the show, so I couldn't really complain. I was at the last tree, and I peeked out from behind the trunk, there didn't seem to be anyone around, and it was pretty quiet, so I started walking through the long grass feeling extremely exposed, I turned and saw that the others weren't following me, and that's when I noticed for the first time the gun pointing at my head.

**Chapter 4**

"Move it girlie your coming with me" I recognised the voice as the soldier who had told his friends to bring me straight to him, if they found me. He jabbed his gun into my back, and I started walking towards the start of the street. He kept his gun in my back the whole way to the show, and I kept praying that someone who wasn't at the show would come out their front door any minute and stop him, but it looked like the whole town was at the show, so there was basically no hope for me.

We arrived at the show grounds, and he shoved me to the gate, there were soldiers waiting for us, they asked the man his name, and he gave over his identity card, once they were satisfied, they opened the gate, and he pushed me through, we walked to a small metal shed, that used to be the coaches box, when there were netball games on, but it looked like they had turned it into some small metal room. "This is where we keep the people we catch, until we find something else to do with them" he said as he shoved me into the box, the last thing I saw before the door closed was his tough gruelling face, giving me a terrifying look. Then the door closed, and I was stuck in a cold dark shed. I started getting extremely anxious and claustrophobic, and within minutes was sure that I would never see daylight again, my only hope was the small ray of sunshine, that shone through a tiny hole. But soon even that disappeared and I was more alone than ever.

I fell asleep at some point during the night, I don't know how I managed it though, there were bangs in the roof and shouting all night. I was awoken the next morning by more loud banging, this time the banging came from a soldier, telling me to wake up. I stood up from the hard, cold ground, and was almost blinded by the light, I instantly felt warmer. The soldier (a different one than last night) took me to a big room, full of people and told me that this is where I would have breakfast, and if there was any funny business that I would regret it.

I stepped into the huge room, and glanced around, hoping to see my mum and dad. I was still looking around the room, and had almost given up hope when I spotted two familiar looking figures, and rushed over to them. My mum and dad greeted me with gladness and surprise. I told them my story of how I was captured, and they told me how things had been going around here. "The soldiers are really, really terrible, they barely feed us, and their always finding any way possible to punish us" my dad said in disgust. I nodded and said "I'm sorry that my plan didn't go the way I wanted it to go, I wanted to help you guys escape, but then I got caught and I feel terrible!" they both gave me sad looks and mum said "we didn't want you risking your life for us anyway, we're just glad you're here with us".

I sat down with them, and we ate breakfast quietly, dad was right the meals were terrible, all we got was some old, dry bread and a meagre amount of butter, and if we were nice enough, they gave us some water to wash it down.

After I'd finished my small breakfast, I decided to just wait with my mum and dad, and if a soldier came to get me, so be it, if they didn't however I'd gladly stay with my parents, and discuss plans of our escape.

No soldier did come to get me, however, and I smiled as I followed my parents back to the shelter. The soldiers still hadn't gotten around to building huts, even for themselves, so everyone had to stay under a big shelter.

It was so cramped under the shelter that we could barely move; we made our way to the corner, where mum and dad had set up some thin mattresses. I sat down, and we started making plans for our escape. "We could bomb the whole place" dad said excitedly, mum and I rolled our eyes at him. "Well have you guys checked the fence yet, to see if there's any gaps?" I asked them. "No we've been a bit scared to even go anywhere near the soldiers" mum replied. I started thinking, and soon a plan had formed in my mind, not a very good one, but at least I had one at all. "Okay here's what we're gunna do" I said, whispering the rest of the conversation, so no one else could hear.

**Chapter 5**

I walked up to the fence, and scanned the area for soldiers; I spotted one, and walked up to him. "Beautiful day isn't it?" I said with enthusiasm. He looked at me and frowned, obviously wondering why I had come to talk to him.

I saw dad creep forward towards the fence, and focused my attention back on the soldier. "What do you know about the sun? I was doing a big project on it at school but ya know sometimes soldiers come and take over the whole town, so I didn't really get the chance to finish it" I said, making myself seem as innocent as possible. "Yeah the sun's big and round and hot" the man replied. "Obviously, I wanted a bit more detail, you stupid person, jeez I didn't know soldiers were this dumb" I said. I could tell he was getting angrier, which was exactly what I wanted to do. "You have no right talking about soldiers like that" he answered. "I sure do, and I tell you what buddy, don't you dare tell me otherwise, because I am my own boss, and I don't want to hear what anyone else has to say" I said earnestly.

By this point I could tell that dad would be almost finished the hole he had made with the pliers, it was almost large enough for a person now, all he had to do was cover it. The man gave me a strange look and said "do you want to continue this conversation in the detention room, with me pointing a gun at your head, or would you rather just leave now?" I put my hands up, as if I was surrendering, and started backing away.

"If you want me, you'll have to come and get me" I said quickly, and started running off. He chased after me, and I headed around the fence, to where my mum would be hidden, she jumped out just in time, he had almost caught up to me, and pulled a sack over his head, she shoved him into the bushes and kicked his head, to concuss him. We checked his breathing, he was still alive, and took the sack off his head.

When the soldier did wake up he would come looking for me, but that's okay he would never recognise me. I had my hair pulled back under dad's cap, and had some of dad's old clothes on, the whole time I had been talking to him, I had spoken like a boy, and had hidden my face, if the soldier did come after me, he would be looking for a boy, which was all part of the plan.

Mum and I walked over to where dad was, and together we all walked back to the shelter, happy that we might still be able to get out of this place. Night came quickly, and we had all of our things ready to go, I felt bad about not helping anyone else escape, but mum and dad had told some other people about the hole, and told them that they could get out too. Dad gave me the signal, which meant it was time to go, and I ran towards the fence, and waited by the hole. I heard the flare before I saw it, there was a whistling sound, and I looked behind me to see what looked like a red flame go up in the air.

Dad's suggestion had come into the plan a bit, he had suggested bombs, but the closest we had was a flare, that dad found in his pocket, so we decided to use that. I saw most of the soldiers on guard rush towards where the flare had been, although a few still remained on guard around the fence, I hoped that they would be distracted enough to notice the two people running towards me. My parents arrived at the gap, and we smiled at each other, I went through first, then mum, then dad.

It was a great feeling to be out of there, even though I had only been there for a night, it felt like forever.

We ran towards the cars, and suddenly I remembered the spotlight, its beam was travelling quickly towards us. I knew that the only way I could escape it would be to hide behind a car, which where at least one hundred metres away, mum and dad were almost there, and I wished that I had longer legs, so that I could keep up with them.

I ran with the look of a crazed person on my face, I was so determined to get to the cars. I turned around, and realised what a mistake I had made on running from the fence, the light was on me, and I could feel the blood rush from my face, as I thought about what they might do to me, to punish me for escaping. I turned back towards the cars, and sprinted, as I ran I screamed for mum and dad to run, and I saw them peek out from behind a car.

Mum reacted first, then dad, they looked like they had seen a ghost, I got to the first car, and turned to see what they were looking at, I think I probably looked like I'd seen a ghost too. There were soldiers, lined along the fence, guns raised, and pointing towards us, I ducked down, just as the shooting started, I felt my legs kick in, and I started crawling to the car where mum and dad had been, I felt bullets whizzing past my face, and felt more terrified than I had ever been in my life.

My parents were waiting for me when I got there, and together we crawled as fast as we could towards the last row of cars, the soldiers were definitely gaining on us, the bullets were coming closer and closer. I could feel my heart pumping a million miles an hour, and I could almost feel death, waiting with open doors.

I looked up quickly, to see what was ahead of me, I noticed a car waiting on the road, the door opened and Homer stepped out. I looked at him twice to make sure I had seen right, what was Homer doing here? I shrugged this thought off and decided that he was probably our best chance of escape; I would just have to wait and see if he would save us in the first place. I signalled to mum and dad and pointed to the car, miming that we should go to it, they nodded in agreement, and we headed over there.

We were almost there when I felt the sting of a bullet pierce my skin, at the top of my leg. I closed my eyes in pain, and tried to just focus on getting to the car; I reached the car door, and found that I didn't even have any strength to open it.

I felt myself being lifted up, and looked up to see a frowning Homer staring back down at me "hey, do you mind taking us somewhere safe?" The question seemed wrong as soon as it came out of my mouth, how could I just ask someone to save my life. "Of course, what do you think I'm here for?" replied homer. I breathed a sigh of relief, and motioned for my parents to jump in the car. Homer opened the car door, and placed me on the seat.

As soon as everyone was in the car he took off, flying down the street. I noticed that Ellie was also in the car, in the passenger seat.

While he was driving, mum checked out my leg, I was almost too scared to look at it, and when I did finally get the courage to look down, my worst fears came true. There was a small hole, where the bullet was lodged, and blood covered my whole leg. I looked at mum, as if to confirm what I was seeing, she nodded at me, like she knew exactly what I was thinking.

The rest of the drive seemed to take forever, I closed my eyes for a bit, when I woke up, mum was leaning over me "I thought you weren't going to wake up!" she said with a worried tone. I realised that I had been unconscious. We arrived at a big house a few minutes after I woke up, dad lifted me out of the car, and carried me to the door. "What do we do now?" I asked. "Now we go to Hell" replied Ellie, and for the second time that night I felt myself fall into unconsciousness.


End file.
